Why Traffic Lights don't burn out

This week one of the florescent bulbs in our kitchen burned out. Because of the design, the entire fixture quit working. Only one bulb was bad, but they all shut down because each one depended on the others to work.

A few weeks before that, a cfl burned out in a fixture in another room. This light continued to work, it just wasn't quite as bright as it had been before. This fixture was designed to continue to provide light by connecting each bulb to the power independently. The room was a bit darker but we still managed just fine without the bulb for a few days until a replacement was purchased and installed.

So I got to thinking about lights that need to never go out, and my mind settled on Traffic Control Lights [we usually call them 'stop lights', cause I guess we don't notice them so much when they are 'go lights']. They need to work, and I expect them to work. There is such a light near my home that has been burning -green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red...for years and I have never pulled up to a burned out light. [We have had a power failure or two, but that's a different blog].

Why don't Traffic Lights burn out? Well, as it turns out there is a clever, and very simple reason why the modern traffic lights in your city don't burn out. Each "bulb" is really about 60 little l.e.d. bulbs. All closely aligned, but independently powered. That way, when a bulb does go out [and it does happen], it's just one dot out of 60, and the light still works just fine...think about that...important that it never goes out, closely aligned, yet independently powered...does that remind you of any other lights?

"And seeing the multitudes...He opened His mouth and taught them, saying...You are the light of the world..." -Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount

I believe that is the way God designed his people to bring light into this world. Like the traffic control signal, God's people, living God's way, give direction to the world. It is a light we can't afford to lose. For that reason, we need to be closely aligned, not identical, but all shining the same light. Yet we must be independently powered, because sometimes, one of our lights goes out.

Consider the chaos, tragedy, and darkness our world would be plunged into if we all quit shining each time one of us stopped. When closely aligned and working together, we can bring light, significant, helpful light, into this world. And they will see our light and glorify the Father.

Part of the brilliance [pun intended] of God's plan is that you don't depend on anyone else to shine. All you need is your own connection to the power source. Don't waste your time examining all the others around you for their "candlepower output". Some will shine brighter than you, and others may quit shining, for a time, or forever. Don't worry about that. We are each an individual ray of light from the Father of lights. Just maintain your own connection and keep on shining!

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:16

New Birth

Just wanted to say how incredibly happy I am that my daughter, Jordan, was baptized into Jesus Christ today! I know there are milestones all through life, but none are any greater than this!

Jordan, my greatest prayer for you is a life of faithfulness to the Lord you claimed as your own today. I am so proud of you, and I love you dearly...

-Daddy

The sneaky benefit of complexity

At my house I have a box of remote controls. One for the TV, one for the DVR/Satellite, one for the Clearplay, one for the over-the-air HD-digital receiver, one for the stereo, one for the DVD/VCR recorder combo, etc. Now, being a typical man, I see this as a thing of beauty. For one, I love remotes, and secondly no-one in the house but me knows which remote does what with which device, sooooooo guess who always gets to run the remote when it's TV time? Clever eh? Just make something so complex that no-one else understands it, and the job is always yours.

Okay, I suspect that our government does this to us all the time [The US tax code for instance]. But what I'm more interested in here is how our religious leaders do the same thing. How many times in a sermon have you heard something like "In the Greek, this word means servant, but not just any kind of servant, it is a special kind of servant, and to get the thought you must understand the ever so delicately discerned shade of meaning that is the critical centerpiece of God's message here... This is the kind of servant...that you couldn't possibly understand, much less teach anyone about, unless you have a Master's of Divinity Degree from an Accredited Theology Department in a Prestigious University, like I do..."

But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. 2 Corinthians 11:3

The truth is that Jesus spoke the common language of the people, the apostles did too. The New Testament was written in common fish-market Greek. The most commonly understood language of the day. Don't be fooled into thinking you can't understand God's word. To be sure, there are difficult passages, and sometimes understanding the Greek can be beneficial, but you don't need a Biblical Criticism and Ancient Languages to understand what God tells you to do. See if you can figure out these difficult passages:

And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.
Mark 16:16
Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God.
Matthew 5:9
love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you
Matthew 5:44

Or this marvel of complexity: "be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another".
I doubt there are many ten year olds who couldn't understand these things. Don't be impressed by the letters behind someone's name when they present a complex explanation of a Bible text. Most false teachers can give an impressively complicated explanation to show
you why the Bible doesn't mean what it says. They shroud the simplicity of Christ in complexity so you'll keep paying their salary.
Read the Bible for yourself, you really can understand it!

A time to Plant

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted...

So I said I would be updating the garden story and the season is almost over so here goes, in a series of posts.


First, our black soil is wonderful...and nasty. It is very thick, heavy clay, sometimes called gumbo. If you try to dig in it when it is wet, you will spend as much time scraping the mud off the shovel as you do digging. If you walk on it when it is wet it will stick to your shoes and you will grow taller and taller as you walk. If you let it get dry in the Texas summer heat, it gets great cracks in the soil, wide enough for a child's foot/leg to fall into, and it gets as hard as brick. There is about a 4 hour window that the moisture content is just perfect for working.

Every year we add organic material to the soil. We've used compost, horse, rabbit and chicken manure, rotted hay, pete moss, etc. Our land used to be a cotton farm, and for all it's foibles, it is very fertile.

As we had left the garden to rest for the previous two years, it takes lots of digging to prepare for a crop. Here Jordan tills the soil the old fashioned way, with some help from mom.

Notice the pan of potatoes that we planted. The red variety don't seem to grow as well but we sure do like them. Nothing like Red 'new potatoes' for supper.

I know sports teaches the concept of teamwork, but there is something different about family teamwork...there just is. One of the neat things about this project was that every day we worked in the garden was just another "take you kid to work day" for us. They get to see, touch, smell, and taste (literally) what they hear us say about hard work and it paying off.

After a few hours work, Jacob is ready to plant the Broccoli. He learned how to dig the hole, mix in compost, and gently pack the soil around the roots. You can tell by the jackets that is was a bit chilly that afternoon in North Texas. Do you think he'll sleep well tonight?

As you can see we got to spend some quality time together digging in the dirt...

Do you think anything will grow?

Why are there so many liberals?

It is well known in legal circles that eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable. It is not terribly uncommon to have eye witnesses who give, not only different, but conflicting, and mutually impossible accounts of an event . Why is that? How can two people see the same thing and see it so differently?

I recently preached on the topic of Grace, Faith and Works and how they relate to one another. Someone remarked, with disdain, that the sermon was no different than what would be heard in a very liberal denomination. This week, a dear friend informed me he can no longer worship with me because I am a legalist. What is so interesting [and candidly, heart breaking] about this is that I am the same guy, believing and teaching the same thing. Yet to hear these people talk, you'd think one of them heard John Calvin preach, while the other was hearing Charles Russell. Again I ask, how is that possible?Well, as usual, I have a theory, and it goes like this. If you consider liberal/conservative beliefs on a continuum, from one extreme to another it would look something like this:

On the one [left] hand you have liberal theology which dismisses the literal truth of God's word. A belief that discounts the necessity of recognizing that Jesus is not only my savior, he is my Lord, and as such gives me commands that I am required to obey. On the other [right] hand, you have radical theology that not only requires obedience to the commands of scripture, it also demands submission to the man made [non-biblical] commands made by the leadership of the particular fellowship.
Now, most of us know that the actual truth is somewhere in between the two extremes, but that isn't really what I am concerned about in this post. What I am wondering is why two people, can hear the same message, preached by the same man, and one walk away believing the message was ultra liberal and the other believing it was radically conservative.
I think that at least part of the answer is that whatever I believe others to be is just as much an indication of what I am as what they are; in fact it may say even more about me than them. You see, if I am very legalistic, considerably more so than the average person, then most people will be more liberal than I am. The result is that, since most people are more liberal than me, I will tend to see more people as liberal. The further right on the chart I am, the greater number of people will be on my left, and therefore seen as liberal from my Point of View.
If on the other hand, I am very liberal in my thinking, most people will be more conservative than me. I will then naturally see a legalist behind every tree. Everyone seems legalistic because they are more legalistic than me. This tendency is not new.
Paul warned against this type of judging by the standard of ourselves when he said:

"For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise." 2 Corinthians 10:12

I judge truth, error and my fellowman using my own opinions and judgments as the standard. One great danger in this is that, if my point of view is more legalistic than scripture, I will tend to think those who walk in truth are too liberal. If my point of view is more liberal than scriptural, I am likely to judge those who embrace the truth to be legalists.

So, my friend, where do you stand? Do you see a liberal behind every tree? Or are we being over-run by right-wing radicals?

$80,000 worth of advice

Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness. Ecclesiasted 2:13

I made a wise financial decision once, then I made a stupid one. I decided to sell our 48 shares of Unocal Stock and buy Best Buy stock. Within three weeks, my portfolio had grown nearly 30%. Wow, how easy is this? Within three months it was up nearly 50%. (Donald Trump watch your back!) Within 6 months it was worth only 1/3 what I paid for it. So what did I do? I'm no fool, I bought more. Doubled my shares. I was 'dollar cost averaging' or so the Motley Fool Website said.

Within 2 more months it was worth just over half of what I paid for the second purchase. Ouch! Those Motley Fool Guys are Idiots! I've gotta get out of this, it's killing me! But I can't sell now, I'll lose all my $$, so I decide "If it ever gets back up to where we can recoup our investment, I'll bail!" Four long years later it happened. What a glorious day! I called the broker and said "Sell it quick!" Then, of all the audacity, he suggested that I 'wait a bit to see what it is going to do'. No. Sell it...all...now. Less than 30 minutes later it was done, and not only did I get my $ back, I actually made about $200!

Within a couple of months the stock (which no longer belongs to me mind you) is worth what my original investment was, then it doubled, then it doubled again, then it split, then it doubled, then it split...over and over again for the the next 5 years. Just to torture myself, I figured it up, if I had held on to those shares, through splits & run ups, and sold at their peak, I'd have made about $80,000. But I brilliantly, loudly, and proudly, settled for $200 and some knowledge.

So, what did I learn from this? I learned that I am not going to spend enough time studying the stock market to make wise stock market decisions. I learned that I'm far better off to sub-contract that job out to someone who will. A specialist. A 'financial advisor' whose job it is to know which industry sectors are doing well, and which ones aren't, and which Mutual Funds are well managed, and which ones aren't. So, every month [remember dollar cost averaging] I put a little more $ in a boring mutual fund. And guess what? Over the last 2 years, when general stock market has lost about 43% from it's high I am down 9%. Why? Because I didn't try to do it myself, I hired a specialist. Sounds like an ad for Merril Lynch huh? Not really, I have lost 9%. Even a specialist, who studies the market daily, can't guarantee certain results. Like with medicine or education, the best doctor in the world may not be able to cure your cancer, and the best teacher in the world may not get you an A in Pre-calculus.

My financial advisor is fond of saying "A rising tide lifts all boats", well it seems the opposite is also true. Today Forbes posted it's list of the world's Billionaires. Subtitle of the story was: Last year the world had 1,125 billionaires. Today there are 793. In fact, the two richest men in the world lost a combined $43 Billion! [which, by the way, is more than the individual GDP of the bottom 115 of the worlds 190 nations!] If I do the math right, they lost a greater percentage than I did...

The moral of the story? If you know what you're doing you stand a much better chance of succeeding, but that still doesn't guarantee returns.

...the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Ecclesiastes 9:11

The General Contractor

Any major construction job has a boss. He's the guy who takes the architect's plans and makes them happen. He's the guy who puts a building on the site. He's called the "General Contractor" (G.C.). He is the point man for the project. How does he get it all done? Well, actually, sub-contractors do most of the work. The G.C. will sign the contract to build the road, school, hospital, etc. which will specify parts of the job the G.C. will take care of himself. Then he will make contracts with many other tradesmen and construction specialists to do pieces of the job; a concrete crew, framers, brick layers, Sheet-rockers, landscapers, plumbers, electricians, etc. Then, under the supervision of the G.C., they will work together to complete the building project.

I believe that guy equates to my job as a Dad. I am the General Contractor of the character of my children. "Whoa there", you say "What about God?" In my analogy God is the Architect, the Designer. Remember Ephesians 6:4?

And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath,
but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

I have full confidence in the Lord to do His part, it's my part I worry about. For instance, I sub-contract out my child's health care to Dr. George Eastman III. He is an excellent Doctor, and he is a man who has dedicated his life to becoming a specialist in Childhood heath. It seems to me, one great challenge of parenting is making wise decisions about what jobs we handle ourselves and what jobs we sub-contract out. You may choose to handle health-care yourself with alternative medicine. Okay, you are G.C., it's your call.

Four years ago, we fired a sub-contractor, the Prosper Independent School District, and decided to educate our children ourselves [yup, we're homeskoolurs]. You may choose to sub-contract Algebra, Science, & Early European Lit. education to your local School District. That too is okay because the Architect never spells out specifically who should set your child's broken elbow, or who should teach him Metal Shop.

But I have a more pertinent question. Who is handling the spiritual education & health of your children? "Hey, that's what we pay the preacher for." "That's why we send them to Sunday School." We sub-contract out their character development and eternal destiny. Oh really? I'm not sure I'm with you on that one Spanky. As I understand the blue-prints from the Architect, he specifies that my wife and I are responsible for that.

Whose job is it to infuse values into my children? Hannah Montana? Zack & Cody? The 'health & sex ed' teacher? Oprah? Harry Potter? Edward the Vampire? Child Protective Services? the Discover Channel? Brittany Spears? No, no, and no, it is me. "Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord". Whether or not you teach them Algebra, teach your kids God's word. Don't 'send them to Sunday School', instead 'take them to church'. Then discuss the sermon, help them apply it in their own lives, let them see you apply it in your life.

Watch Hannah Montana with them and help them discern the good from the bad. Read 'Twilight' before you give it your teenage daughter then decide if it is appropriate and discuss it with her regardless of your decision. Dads, we are the General Contractors of our children's lives. We must pay careful attention to what parts of their lives we sub-contract out, and even then we must oversee and inspect the work that is done. If not, we may be heart-broken by a building that will be a hazard to itself and everyone around it.